


if our love died young, i can't bear witness (and it's been so long)

by rightwhereyouleftmes



Category: N/A - Fandom
Genre: Breakups, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, Original Character(s), brief alcohol mentions, i am very dyslexic i apologise for any mistakes actually, i have never written anything meant to be published PLEASE do not bully me this is my coping skill, please go to therapy instead of writing about taylor swift songs, this should've stayed in the drafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28091853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightwhereyouleftmes/pseuds/rightwhereyouleftmes
Summary: but if you ever think you got it wrong,i'm right where you left me.





	if our love died young, i can't bear witness (and it's been so long)

did you ever hear about the girl who got frozen?  
time went on for everybody else, she won't know it  
she's still 23 inside her fantasy,  
how it was supposed to be.  
did you hear about the girl who lives in delusion?  
breakups happen every day, don't have to lose it  
she's still 23 inside her fantasy

\--

As soon as the line goes dead, Melanie feels her heart drop. She doesn’t have the energy or strength to argue this time, she just stares at her phone until the screen goes dark. There is nothing to do, nothing to say, so she silently pulls her jacket over her shoulders. She does what she does best and she runs. She runs until the pound of her feet against the concrete deafens the pound of her heart. She runs until she’s in front of the bar she knows all too well. She pauses, leaning against the railing, looking at the boats sitting peacefully on the water. She’s struggling to catch her breath, her throat burns, and tears are still stinging at her eyes. 

As soon as she walks into the bar, she’s hit by the smell of bar food and alcohol. She hoists herself up onto one of the tall chairs and she waits a few minutes before ordering a drink. She’s sure everyone can read the look on her face, considering the way everyone is looking at her. Can everyone tell how miserable and heartbroken she is? She decides to ignore it, it would be easier to do that instead of accepting the fact that everyone knows. She slams her drink down, pays, and just gets the hell out as fast as she can. 

She steps out of the bar, taking off her glasses and pressing her palms against her eyes. The pavement was still wet from the storm that rolled through earlier in the day, but the usual mid December cold had finally set in. A part of her wishes it would rain again so she could cry freely without strangers watching, judging, doing whatever they did. She should’ve seen this coming, she thinks. She doesn’t know what to do, she’s slightly tipsy and she just wants to go home. She wants this entire day to start over, so she can do something, change something so it wouldn’t have ended up like this. 

People are starting to stare as she helplessly stands outside of the bar and it makes her feel so incredibly nervous. The only person who she truly wanted to call to help her caused this whole mess in the first place. She ponders the options she has, calling a cab herself and crying all the way home to a stranger or calling her friends and getting met with the “I told you so”s that were so obviously going to come. She doesn’t really want either of those options, but at least there’s some level of comfort in a friend instead of a random cab driver who’d probably forget everything she had said within minutes. 

She turns through her memories, desperately trying to remember every moment from the past two years. Was it her fault? Was it something she did? Did she do something way too out of line? She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, she doesn’t want to remember these things when she feels so fragile, like she’s on the verge of shattering into pieces. She takes a deep breath as she opens her phone, she doesn’t want to look at their pictures together, she knows she wouldn’t be able to bear it. She looks through her contacts and her thumb hovers over his name. A part of her wants to call him back and apologize profusely, tell him she’s sorry, ask if she can try again and have a second chance. She decides that if she can’t leave with her heart intact, she’d at least leave with her grace and dignity. 

Before Melanie can do anything horribly stupid that she’d regret later, she calls Alex, who would most definitely tell her that he told her so, but at this point in time, she couldn’t give less of a shit if she tried. She just wants to be back home in her bed, wrapped up in her warm blankets as she watches her favorite TV shows. Her head is starting to hurt and she can’t tell if it’s from the alcohol or the fact she’s been holding her tears back for hours now. She doesn’t want Alex or anyone else to see her cry. The least she could do is save it for her mother, who would pretend to care for a moment before forgetting about it completely. The least she could do is pretend that everything is perfectly fine, it doesn’t hurt her, and just simply carry on with her life. 

Alex finally picks up the phone and she takes a deep, shaky breath before beginning to tell the story from the beginning - the phone call, how she ran all the way into the city to try to clear her mind, stopped at the bar and got slightly tipsy, before realizing that she had no way back home. She can hear him let out a sigh of disappointment, but he agrees to take her home. It’s only a short drive from here back to her house, she could run back home, but it’s cold, dark, and disgustingly wet outside and she’s not fully sober. She leans against the same railing, feeling exhausted, but for the first time since she got the call, she feels some bit of peace. She’s still very upset and she would still very much enjoy a good cry, but she feels somewhat peaceful. 

They drive back to Melanie’s house in silence. Alex doesn’t give her any “I told you so"s, and she makes a mental note to thank him for that later. She can see him looking over at her from the drivers side, she can read the look of pity across his face. She’ll allow Alex to pity her for now, it’s nice to know that someone cares. She wipes away a stray tear that slid down her cheek, she wasn’t going to cry in front of strangers and she wasn’t going to cry in front of her friends either. He asks her if she’s okay and she babbles out some nonsense that she doesn’t fully understand herself. Alex drops her off in front of her house and she thanks him, knowing she would’ve never gotten home otherwise. 

She stumbles up the front steps and stands on the porch for a few minutes, trying to collect herself before walking into the house. She opens the door, her mother is nowhere to be found. Melanie assumes she’s already asleep or out running another errand. She storms up the stairs to her room before crashing onto her bed, finally able to cry. She doesn’t even bother trying to stop it at this point when she’s already been suppressing it for hours now. She tries to focus her thoughts on anything else, she thinks about the latest episode of her favorite TV show, the next portrait she’s going to paint, the next craft she’s going to try, but all her thoughts circle right back to him. She wonders if he’s just as miserable as she is, if he’s regretting it yet, if he wants to call her just as badly as she wants to call him. She grabs her phone, contemplating whether or not she wants to call. She wonders if he’d even answer the phone if she did. She lets out a huff, shutting her phone all the way off and laying it back on her nightstand so she doesn’t do something she’d regret when she’s fully sober.

Time feels frozen to her, it’s been hours, but she’s still stuck in her living room with every word exchanged between the two of them in those ten minutes burned right into her mind. She wonders if she’s going to be haunted, cursed, or whatever for the rest of her life. 

She doesn’t want to be vulnerable, she doesn’t want anyone to pity her right now, nobody needs to see how truly devastated she is. She turns on the TV and flips through the channels, but she gives up on finding anything decent. She tucks herself under her blankets and stares over at the empty spot that was so often filled. The sight breaks her heart and she rolls over, not needing to feel any worse than she already does. She knows she isn’t going to fall asleep tonight, she’ll be replaying those excruciating ten minutes over and over in her head until she can’t keep her eyes open and she’s forced to fall asleep. She’s hoping that this is just some shitty nightmare she’ll wake up from and that she won’t wake up feeling completely alone and empty. It never is a nightmare, unfortunately, at least not for her. Maybe she’ll call in the morning when she’s sober, a little braver, and a little stupid from sleep deprivation. Maybe she’ll just let this whole thing die without trying to save it, maybe she’ll toss all those years down the drain, just so she can move on. 

She doesn’t really want to move on. She’s not entirely sure she can. 


End file.
